


IR Relief

by WhatHaveWeDone



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatHaveWeDone/pseuds/WhatHaveWeDone
Summary: anything written for gumnut-logic's IR Relief event on Tumblr. For the fluff!
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: EOS and Scott bonding time (bonus if it’s over John) from tsarinatorment

“Has it got any better EOS?” Scott was tired, bone tired, too tired to settle but not too tired to worry. He had not been on the island for more than twelve hours in the last seventy-two and had now been grounded as unsafe to fly. That just freed him up for other work though, for as much as he had been on the go in the last few weeks there was someone who’d been getting less sleep than him. 

“Not significantly. It is  twenty three hours since his last rest period.”

“Remind me of what we’ve tried.” Scott said, running a weary hand across todays stubble.

“I have prepared milky drinks, played soothing music and increased the ambient temperature to promote drowsiness. He just poured another coffee.”

“Did we swap the coffee out for decaf yet?”

“We tried that last week. He noticed straight away and had it replaced.”

“Damn it. Any other ideas? He needs to get a decent night’s sleep. Can you reroute all calls to island? He might sleep if he is bored.”

“He would just get a head start on next week’s  m aintenace schedule. I could always adjust the composition of the atmosphere slightly. A bit less oxygen and a bit less carbon dioxide might have the desired affect.”

_ “Of all the things I miss up here, I miss Grandma Tracy’s cookies the most.” _

_ “He wants Grandma Tracy’s cookies?” Alan paused in his cleaning, confused.  _

_ A spike of fear and adrenaline battled for control, but Scott pushed them both down. “That’s not John.” _

_ The twist in his stomach as Three launched. The sick feeling when Brains patched though to the real John. The numbness as he watched his brother’s eyes slide closed, suffocating alone. _

Scott blinked away the memory. They were past all that, long past, but still “Let’s not have you mess with John’s air supply.”

“Of course.” The small holographical representation of the mechanical body that housed the infinite complexity of the artificial intelligence focused it’s lens on him. It could have been Scott’s imagination that he was being scrutinised and assessed, but he knew better.

“What?”

“Have you tried talking to him? He has a great deal of respect for your opinions and authority, I’m sure that he would listen once you explained the concerns you have for his health.”

The blinking light seemed very  ….. earnest. But had she learned about sarcasm?

“John? Listen to me? Are you kidding? I haven’t been able to get John to do what he’s told since he got tall enough to reach the cookie jar himself. If I thought John would listen to a  damned  word I said ..... well, life would be a lot easier.”

“I have a great analytic ability than any other system on the planet, access to every piece of information in human history and can extrapolate and  interpret from it  in a moment. And he doesn’t listen to me either.”

Scott smiled, gave a rueful laugh. “If he wasn’t  stubborn he wouldn’t be nearly as good at his job. But I’m sure we can beat him together. Now, what other ideas do you have?”


	2. A little Elevator Incident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a combination of the prompt ' John hurt or in danger in a space elevator incident. ' (I have something much more whumpy planned based on this as well!) from chaoticeaglebananamug and 'John and Gordon and having stuff in common ' from scribbles97

The space elevator was perfectly designed for its purpose – getting one person to and from Five when it was in  geostationary orbit. The cable that connected it could take four times the actual weight of any cargo it was ever going to carry. The capsule itself was triple walled against the trauma of both vacuum and re-entry. It had a flotation device for emergency water landings that double as cushioning for emergency land...... landings. 

All thoroughly tested,  particularly today. An errant gust of wind when he was nearly safely docked had smashed the  capsule - and John inside – into the side of the mountain overlooking the island. He wasn’t hurt, at least no more than a little  bruising from being thrown against his safety harness but there had been an overload of the docking system as the preliminaries had already begun. Nothing too serious, the module was still intact but the doors were malfunctioning: wedged shut and refusing to open. 

John had been in there for three and a half hours at this point and by the looks of things Brains was making no progress on freeing him. Gordon had to pick his way through pieces of circuitry and tools and  paneling to get close, Brains barely stopping to give him a nod of  acknowledgment at his approach. 

“How’s it going?” He asked, leaning on the nearest railing.

“Not good to be honest” Brains sat back on his heals and wiped his brow. “I think the wiring is too badly damaged for the doors to be operational. It might be quicker just to take out the panel, though I would have to modify a laser cutter and even that might take another hour. I’m so sorry John, I should have thought about this and engineered it better.”

“Brains, I’ve told you before, you  _ did  _ engineer it perfectly, else I would be smeared across the island right now.  So go easy on  yourself would you?” John’s voice, transmitted from inside the elevator was tinny and tired, as well it might be. John had blown past his scheduled rest day by at least seventy-two hours even before he had spent half a shift stuck in there. 

“Why don’t you go get what you need to cut him out,” Gordon suggested “I’ll keep him company.”

Brains didn’t hesitate for a moment now a decision had been made, and thundered down the stairs to his workshop.

“You don’t need to stay Gordon.” John said, as the  echos from Brains’ footsteps faded.

“ Sure I do. Who knows what trouble you’ll get into if you aren’t supervised.”

“Trouble? Trouble? Gordon, the door won’t open, the consoles are off line because Brains is tearing the electrics apart and even the damn harness won’t release. You do know that there is literally nothing I can do in here, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.” Gordon said softly, sitting down with his back against the wall “that’s why I’m staying.”

John spent ninety five percent of his time in orbit, in the confines of a few hundred feet of corridors and tubing. His life was contained within walls at almost all times so you would think that he wouldn’t have a problem with spending time contained in the space elevator. After all, it was just like Five, but smaller, right?

No. 

It wasn’t that John was claustrophobic – really not. But during one long sleepless night when Gordon had been digging through a cargo ship’s worth of debris for pollutants John had confided that he didn’t feel at all confined when up on the station. He was as free in space as he was on the earth and it was only during the transition between the two that he felt at all ill at ease. 

And now he was literally trapped in there, cut off and held in. Gordon could  empathise with that, though his experience with being trapped in his own machine had been decidedly more  perilous . He knew John more than well enough to hear the tightness in his voice that usually only seeped out when he was most stressed with too many calls and not enough hands. To hear it now meant John was struggling with being downed when he should be walking – or floating – free, wound up tight with the need to move and straining against the impossibility of it.

He needed a distraction, but with most of the elevator’s systems off line there was nothing in there, no reports to read, no data to analyse or EOS to talk to. Which is where Gordon came in. 

“Tell me about that latest paper you wrote.”

“What?”

“It got published somewhere didn’t it?”

“In sixteen journals and four languages.” John said, testy that anyone could forget that.

“So what was it about?”

“It’s not really your thing Gordon.”

“Maybe, but you’ve got an hour and my undivided attention. I  challenge you to  _ make  _ it my thing.”

“Thanks Gordon,” John said softly, before launching into a very  long winded summary of his latest breakthrough that Gordon tried his hardest to understand. After all John was usually the one who listened, he was owed at least this much in return.


End file.
